Obiki is open source software for creating structured Wiki-like web content. Wikis are like a series of blackboards in cyberspace (see www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki{blank}), allowing a group of participants to create and manage web pages simply and without extensive knowledge of html. Obiki builds on this foundation, allowing for the simple and rapid creation of sophisticated web pages. Any number of users may participate in the process.
Obiki includes an extensive class of components or functional objects that users can place on pages, like a series of sophisticated digital building blocks. The elements may be as simple as a block of text or an image, and as complicated as a listserv or a calendar. Pages may be built by creating a series of these elements, which may then be edited, reordered, deleted or added to as necessary. If a component does not exist for a user’s need, Obiki allows for the insertion of html or mason code to create new functionality.
Obiki also allows user management of authorship privileges, permitting specific groups or individual users access or editing privileges for specific documents or groups of documents.
Additional features that are important in some applications include the ability to use forms to create and operate questionnaires or to enable the automatic creation of new web pages and the use of multiple language layers.
The Obiki software allows for the complete creation and maintenance of a website using only a web browser. This is accomplished through the creation of "documents." Each "document" is a web page and becomes a node in a dynamic tree of pages. Adding, updating, and managing these pages can be done simply while online and without any other software. Each Obiki site is setup with an administrator account to create documents and manage user and website content availability. From the administrator account the privileges are set for those just browsing the site and for those collaborating on the site. Specialized content can also be made available to a selected audience.
Obiki is designed around the premise that documents under its control reside within an unlimited level tree. At the root of the tree is a base document under which all others are cataloged. Every document may act as a parent for an unlimited number of other documents (called child documents). When creating a new document the user must denote under which parent document it belongs. If required, the document's parent can be changed at a later date. For those familiar with conventional html site structure, think of each document as being an html page, and also the folder that contains all the child documents that appear beneath it.
Although every document is composed of unique elements, overall site design is provided by a template that is applied to all documents, giving them the same basic visual structure. This template consists of standard html and has an associated css document that can be used to style elements within the site. The template structure is flexible, allowing for an unlimited number of sub-templates, called design templates, that may or may not be utilized within the master template.
While there is one document tree per Obiki installation, there may be multiple "sites" for each installation. Each site has its own unique domain name and a root document within the tree. In addition, each site may use its own templates to override the default templates and have its own unique appearance.
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